Three historic Catholic politicians models for today, author says

By John Gleason

Some 90 people gathered at the John Paul II the evening of Sept. 23 to hear award-winning journalist Mark Stricherz deliver the fifth annual Casey Lecture sponsored by the Archdiocese of Denver.

The lecture series is named after the late Robert P. Casey Sr., a committed Catholic and former governor of Pennsylvania. Casey is remembered as a brave elected official who embodied his Christian morals and values in his public life.

Stricherz, author of “Why the Democrats Are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People’s Party,” spoke about Casey and two other men who lived out their Catholic beliefs in the public arena: David Lawrence and Robert Kennedy.

The three individuals were men of character who stood up to injustice, challenged Americans to do better for themselves and their neighbors and spoke out for those who could not speak for themselves.

“David Lawrence was a moral man who worked behind the scenes to ensure that black voters were kept in the Democratic coalition and put a strong civil rights plank in the party platform during the 1948 convention,” Stricherz told the audience.  “It wasn’t something that a lot of politicians wanted to talk about.”

It would have been easy for Lawrence to succumb to those who wanted to avoid the subject, but he knew what was right and refused to give up.

“During the convention he worked the delegates in the Pennsylvania delegation until he had enough votes to put the plank in the party platform,” Stricherz said.  “He was a good person, a good Catholic and deserves a good share of the credit of the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s.”

Turning to Robert Kennedy, Stricherz said that he was a politician who spoke in a moral univeralist language that isn’t heard much today.

Shortly after the Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated, Kennedy addressed a crowd in Cleveland, Ohio, with what has been called the “Mindless Menace of Violence” speech.  In it, Kennedy said, “We seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence…we glorify killing on movies and television screens and call it entertainment…preach non-violence abroad and fail to practice it here at home.”

“Kennedy was saying that those who live with us are our brothers,” Stricherz said.  “It’s a Christian message that you don’t hear a lot today because it’s safer for politicians today to not talk that way.”

Kennedy was not afraid to speak out when he felt it was necessary.  He was critical of Catholic students in Nebraska for criticizing the government.

“He told them they should have been doing their own bit to help poor people instead of just criticizing the war in Vietnam,” Stricherz said.  “He believed that we need to be responsible for others.

Stricherz calls Gov. Robert Casey “a white martyr.”  A martyr without blood, he explained, is one who makes of themselves a total offering to God by “dying” to the world and its allurements.

“It happens when someone loses status within his profession because he upholds his beliefs,” Stricherz said.

Popular in his home state of Pennsylvania, Casey wanted to take the subject of abortion to the national level at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.  He was refused the opportunity to speak and as a result, Stricherz said, rose no further in the presidential wing of the party.

“It was a big risk,” he said.  “He could have moderated his stand on abortion, come out as a moderate pro-choicer and run for president, but he didn’t.  Gov. Casey put his vocational neck on the line by putting principle above power and they shut him down for it.”

Without making comparisons, Stricherz said that the stories of all three of these men could have been included in the book “Profiles in Courage” if it had been written at a later time.
“They stood up for what they knew to be right,” he said.  “But that often comes with a price.”

Stricherz later told the Denver Catholic Register that he hoped that those who attended the lecture came away inspired by the example of great Catholic politicians.

“These three men did what they could in their day,” he said.  “What are we doing in our day to follow Christ’s lead?”